Over the years, we've occasionally run an "Ask OSNews" feature, wherein a reader asks us a question and we answer it publicly. Lately I've really been enjoying Slate's Dear Prudence advice column and the ever-interesting Straight Dope, and I thought we should see if we can get more OSNews readers to submit questions, and turn Ask OSNews into a more-regular thing. If your question falls outside of our domain expertise, we'll try to track down an expert to help out. And of course, our responses will always be supplemented by further advice from OSNews readers in the comments. Questions are welcome on any topic ranging from OSes and computing to science and geek culture. Contact us with your questions. (Please include "Ask OSNews" in the subject). Today's question is from a young student in Hungary who's seduced by the faraway siren song of Apple's marketing and wonders, "should I switch?"

I have been through the VIC-20, DOS, the Amiga, OS/2, Windows, and Linux, and about four years ago I bought an iBook G4 cheap. It converted me.

My desktop runs Ubuntu, but the MacBook Pro I bought nearly three years ago has been my primary work and home machine. The AppleCare has taken great care of me. I've had a hard drive and battery replaced, and they remarked that my keyboard looked more worn than any other laptop they've seen, and replaced it without question.

The other thing is that sleep mode works more consistently on this laptop than on any other device. That makes it truly useful. I rarely reboot this thing.

OSX, it's such a charmer. That's the real deal. You can do good things with Linux, but the attention paid to OSX's UI is just overwhelmingly obvious. It's also highly keyboard-shortcut friendly, more consistently so than most environments. I'm till hoping Gnome and KDE catch up in this department.

If you must go the Linux route for affordability, ideology, or perhaps the wider range of free software, XFCE and Gnome have taken more notes from OSX than KDE. You can approximate the look and feel, and I highly recommend using the XFCE terminal app in any case.

Really, you've got plenty of good Windows alternatives. I just like what's been good to me.